


Lacework

by Hermaline75



Series: Darcy, Loki, and the Yarn Store [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Human AU, M/M, Mild Angst, Wedding Planning, Yarn shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:15:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 18,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermaline75/pseuds/Hermaline75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to 'Entrelac'. The series will make more sense if read in order.</p><p>Loki has settled in quite well working in Darcy's yarn store. But when Thor asks Jane to marry him and wants Loki to be his best man, Darcy finds herself in a world of logistical and emotional problems.</p><p>Keep the bride calm, keep the groom sane, and stop the best man from messing up. How hard can it be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The sound of her phone was a welcome relief. Not that Darcy didn’t love Christmas with her mother; or so she told herself. She excused herself from the post-dinner stupor falling over the room.

“Darcy? You there?” Loki’s voice before she even had the chance to say hello.

“Yeah, hey. How’re the holidays on the estate?” It had taken her weeks to convince him to go to his parents’ rather extensive home for Christmas with Thor and Jane. Exposure therapy, she told herself. The more time Loki spent with Thor the more he could build their relationship into something stable and mutually beneficial.

“Fine, it’s fine,” he whispered hurriedly. “Look, you said I had to come to you whenever the whole ‘run away’ instinct kicked in...”

“What’s happened? And why are you whispering?”

“I’m hiding in the bathroom.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want them to know I’m calling you. When can I come back to work? I need an excuse to get out of here. Seriously.”

“Loki. Calm down and talk to me. What’s happened?”

“Look, when Jane calls you have to sound surprised.”

“What’s happened?”

“They’re getting married, Darcy. Thor and Jane. They’re getting married.”

She paused.

“We knew this was a possibility, Loki. You knew this would probably happen.” she said, gently.

“Yeah, but... But that’s not all of it.”

“She’s not pregnant is she?”

“No. God, no. But Thor’s asked me to be his best man. Me, Darcy. Me! He wants me to get up and make a speech about how we’re a happy family and tell funny stories. And probably organize his bachelor party.”

“You can do this, Loki. You can’t exactly say no. It won’t be so bad, you’ll be fine. And think about how happy this will make Thor. Having his brother with him on his big day? He’ll be ecstatic. You can do this, I’ll help you.”

“You realize you’re being roped in too?”

Her blood ran cold.

“How do you mean?”

“Well... Who else is Jane going to ask to be her maid of honor?”

“No. No, no, she can’t! I don’t have the time…”

“Yeah, well. Bad luck, you. You can’t exactly say no.” She could hear the sarcastic smirk. “But anyway, can I go in to work tomorrow? I really need some time to think this over. Away from Thor. Please.”

“Sure. I won’t be there and we’re not open, but sure. Blame me, call me a slave driver who expects you to work between Christmas and New Year. Organize the store room or something. Just don’t run off.”

“And when Jane calls, sound surprised.”

“I’ll try. See you soon.”

“Bye.”

Her phone rang again about ten minutes later.

“Jane!” she answered chirpily. “What a surprise!”

Jane was understandably excited. And just as Loki had predicted, she asked Darcy to be her right-hand woman.

“What does that actually entail?” Darcy asked warily.

“Well… You have to come dress shopping with me, help me think about color schemes and menus and seating plans and all of that. Oh, and you get to manage the bachelorette party.”

“Burly strippers. Got it.”

“No strippers, Darcy.”

“I bet Thor’s getting strippers…”

“Thor is NOT getting strippers!”

There were some sounds of protest from Jane’s end of the line. Darcy distinctly heard Loki using the voice he uses when he wants something and thinks you’ll give in.

“No way…” Jane was saying. “No! I don’t care if you only get male strippers and- No, we wouldn’t have only female strippers at my bachelorette to make up for it… No one is having strippers, Loki.”

Darcy giggled.

“Stop laughing, you’ll only encourage him.” Jane said.

“Sorry. Oh, has Loki mentioned that I really need him to sort out the supply room this week before we reopen? Because I do.”

 _I am the best friend_ , she thought. _Casually lying to my bestie to give my employee a chance to run away from family holidays…_

But it was necessary. As long as she knew where Loki was, she could be sure he was alright and not doing anything stupid.

Not anything too stupid anyway.

“He didn’t mention it,” Jane said, almost suspiciously.

“Well, he probably forgot. When’s the date for this wedding anyway?”

_Smooth. Super smooth._

“April 14th. A spring wedding.”

“Wow. That’s soon.”

“It’s, like, 16 weeks away. Plenty of time.”

Darcy was willing to bet that this would not be plenty of time.

_OK. Dresses; menus; bachelorette party; flowers; invites; wedding favors; stop the best man from fucking up because he’s in love with the groom._

_Easy, right?_


	2. Chapter 2

She decided she’d call Loki tomorrow when he was ‘at work’ to talk to him about it properly.

“Darcy…” his voice was breathy down the phone. “Can I call you back?”

“Um… Why? Are you busy?”

“Just a little bit…”

“Loki, are you having sex right now?”

“Might be.”

“Jesus!”

“Well, I mean, not _right_ right now, I’ve paused to speak to you. It seemed polite.”

“Call me back. And tell… whoever’s there with you that I say hi.”

“I’m sure he’d also like to wish you hello but he’s a little tied up right now.”

“Remind me to have that conversation about over-sharing with you. Again.”

She made coffee and tried to get those stubborn images of being in the place of whoever Loki had attached to his headboard right now out of her head. She thought she’d gotten rid of that little crush but it had a tendency to reoccur at random intervals. Eventually her phone rang.

“Hey. All washed up?” she asked sharply.

“Yes, actually. What did you want?”

“I…” she thought about it. “I figured you might want to talk about the whole Thor thing. The whole Thor getting married thing.”

“Why?”

“Well, considering you called yesterday begging me to give you an excuse to get out of your parents’ place, I thought you might want to discuss your feelings on the matter.”

“I didn’t beg.”

“You did a bit. And that’s why I decided to call and see if you were OK.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“Well, what’s the usual reaction people have when the love of their life marries someone else and asks them to be a part of the ceremony?” he snapped.

Darcy said nothing.

He sighed. “Sorry. It’s not your fault. I know it’s not, I’m just… I’ll adapt and I’ll be fine, but you have to believe me when I say I’m coping.”

“Using casual sex as a crutch isn’t coping, Loki.”

“What? Oh, that. That had nothing to do with this. I was just bored and sent out the call to see who else was unoccupied this fine December day.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Honestly, he was bored and lonely. It was practically a Christmas present to ourselves. Trust me.”

“Hmmm. OK, suppose I trust you for now. What the hell are we going to do?”

“What about?”

“What do you think? The wedding. The fact that we have, like, three months to run this show, you and me, making sure those two get down the aisle.”

“Well, I don’t know what problems you’re foreseeing, but I plan to do as little as possible, get Thor and some of his buddies drunk a couple of weeks beforehand, show up on the day, make an unmemorable speech and then drink myself into a stupor. And anyway, like you say, it’s months away. Calm down.”

“You realize we’ll have to dance together?”

“Hmm?”

“The best man and the maid of honor dance together. I think. It’s tradition. Or something.”

“And?”

“Can you dance? I can’t dance.”

“How hard can it be, Darcy? We have months to learn. You are going to be so much worse than Jane… She’ll be all calm and serene and unfussed and you’ll be running around like the world will end if everything isn’t perfect.”

“She’ll deal with me, but you’ll have to deal with Thor.”

“What about him?”

“He’s so laid back, too laid back. He’d probably get married in shorts if we let him.” There was a pause from Loki. “He’s not getting married in shorts, you’re taking him suit shopping.”

“Thor looks good in shorts.”

“I don’t doubt it, but he can’t get married in them!”

“Spoilsport.”

“You’re… you’re teasing me.”

“Just a bit. And you do make it very easy…”

She huffed. “I’m going to order every bridal magazine I can. Someone has to take this wedding seriously.”

“The next few months in the Yarn Barn are going to just fly by, aren’t they? I wonder if you can knit veils…”

“Don’t tempt me to try.”

Silence fell between them.

“Look, are you sure you’re OK?” she asked finally.

“I’ll get there. This is what he wants. It will make him happy and I want him to be happy. I’m not going to do anything unwise. I’ll cope, and if I ever think that maybe I can’t then I know you’ll be there. Also not coping.”

“Hey!”

“We can not-cope together, it’ll be fun…”

“No, it won’t.”

“No, but Thor and Jane will be blissfully happy together and then we can get back to our normal lives, satisfied with a job well done.”

“…You really are OK about this, aren’t you?”

“Like I said, I just needed time by myself to think. I’ve had that time. I stopped wanting to set fire to things, which I’ll admit had been an early reaction. I thought about it. And it’s fine. He was never mine to lose and all that jazz…”

“You’re mixing your musicals a bit there. How do you know those lyrics anyway?”

“Your fault. You play them in the store all the time. It just seeps in.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s your store.”

“No, I meant… sorry for implying that you couldn’t cope by yourself.”

“Ah, but I’m not coping by myself. I have you. And I knew you wouldn’t let me freak out about this so there was no point in trying.”

“Was that… was that a thank you?”

“Could have been.”

“Then I guess you’re welcome.”

“When will you be back from your mom’s? I miss you. And I don’t say that very often, so be flattered.”

“Just after New Year. We’re getting new fingering-weight alpaca in on the 7th of January. Apparently. The deliveries don’t always come on time at this time of year.”

“Oooh, exciting.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“I’m not. You know I love a bit of alpaca. I love a bit of fingering too.”

“Please stop making that joke.”

“Oh, come on, you’d think I was ill if I didn’t.”

“Bye, Loki. See you soon. Don’t set fire to anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So one of the major reasons this sequel exists is that I thought of that fingering-weight joke. I'd pretend to be ashamed but I'm really not.)


	3. Chapter 3

Loki stared at her in disbelief when she dumped a three foot high stack of wedding magazines on the counter.

“A little light reading?”

“I need ideas. I’m seeing Jane in three days when she and Thor get back from your parents’ place. I need to have a shortlist.”

“Of what? Dresses?”

“Everything. A shortlist of dresses, a shortlist of colors, a shortlist of flowers, music, everything.”

“Did she ask you to do this?”

Darcy bit her lip thoughtfully. “Not in so many words… But she’ll thank me in the long run.”

“OK,” Loki said. “You know her better than I do. Want a hand? It’s not like we’re expecting customers today.”

Together they sifted through page after page of near-identical dresses. Darcy couldn’t really picture Jane in any of them. In her head jeans and boots kept stubbornly appearing under the petticoats.

“What’s the difference between ivory and white?” Loki asked at one point.

“Er… I think ivory is slightly less white than white? I think we should be aiming more towards cream though, I think it will suit Jane’s complexion.”

“Does Thor get a say?”

“About the dress? No. He’s not even meant to see it until the actual event.”

“No, does he get a say in anything? Does he get to pick out his own outfit?”

“Well, I wasn’t planning to choose it for him. You should help him pick. Just don’t let him choose anything that will clash with the color scheme.”

“Which is…?”

“I think I’ve narrowed it down to periwinkle, teal, cyan, cerise or magenta. Or maybe cerulean.”

“So blue or deep pink, basically?”

She huffed at him. “Yes, blue or deep pink.”

“Have you considered red? Thor likes red. It’s kind of his color, you might have noticed.”

“If Thor likes red, I’m sure he can wear red accessories. We can get a nice blue for the table settings and bridesmaids’ dresses to contrast and compliment it...”

For a few minutes there was nothing but the sound of turning pages.

“He’s nervous about it, you know. Thor’s worried about the wedding.” Loki said eventually.

“How do you mean?”

“He called me last night. He’s scared. He was so anxious about asking her, so scared that she’d say no, that he never stopped to consider what would happen if she said yes.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him to calm down, that little bro was here for him, and that he loves Jane and this will be a chance to stand up in front of all the people most important to him in the world and demonstrate how happy he is to have found such a wonderful person.”

“OK, what did you really tell him?”

Loki looked up at her. “I am deeply offended that you don’t think me capable of such sentiment. That is, more or less, exactly what I said.”

“More or less?”

“There was a certain degree of brotherly ribbing, but nothing serious. I may have implied that I don’t understand what Jane sees in the big oaf, and that clearly she must have extremely low standards, that kind of thing.”

He looked away. Darcy felt the familiar gnawing sensation in her stomach that she felt whenever she wasn’t sure what to do about this situation. It was getting better, but sometimes she was afraid that the day she couldn’t help would be the day Loki would vanish. It was definitely getting better though. Sometimes Thor came for dinner in Loki’s apartment above the yarn store. Sometimes Jane came with him. Everything was ridiculously normal. And sometimes Thor would smile and clap an arm around Darcy’s shoulder in unspoken thanks as if she’d done something other than just listen and accept Loki for who he was.

She just feared the day when listening wouldn’t be enough.

“What was he nervous about?” she asked.

“He doesn’t think he’s good enough for her.”

Darcy nodded sagely. This was dangerous ground. Loki’s love for Thor bordered on the unhealthy; it was a strange blend of resentment and idolatry which was never going to resolve entirely but could hopefully be managed. But she knew that really he thought Thor was too good for Jane. Thor was too good for anyone, in Loki’s mind. Especially not himself – he spent his days knowing that he’d never be truly happy if Thor was with someone else but that they couldn’t be together either and learning to put aside his own desires for his brother’s happiness was proving a hard lesson.

It would have been so easy for him to agree with Thor and encourage him to call off the wedding. And he hadn’t.

“It was kind of you to reassure him.” she said.

He shrugged. “As best man I figured it was my duty. After all, isn’t there something about the best man marrying the bride if the groom doesn’t show up? I couldn’t do that to Jane…”

“She’d be lucky to have you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’d kill each other.”

“That’s true. I’d give it a week until she buried you under a patio.”

“She’d beat me to death with a heavy book. Or run me through with my own knitting needles…”

And there was another happy surprise of the last few months. Loki was inexplicably good at knitting. Not quite to Darcy’s standard yet, though to be fair she’d been knitting since childhood. But he had finished his first scarf and moved on in leaps and bounds. The next thing she’d known, he was puzzling over lace patterns.

“It’s like it’s written in code,” he had said. “Yfwd? K2tog, I understand that. No idea on ssk or psso though…”

Darcy had offered help but he jealously gripped the pattern to his chest to prevent her seeing it. He was still determined to figure it all out on his own, despite Darcy’s warnings that trying to do lace was like trying to do three equations at once without a pencil.

But he was good at the basics. He was good at teaching the basics. Darcy had had a brief conversation with him about not sleeping with customers since as he’d started doing classes which were attracting a number of new customers, both male and female. Which was a good thing on the whole; it meant they were selling more yarn, more needles, and since they’d started charging 30 cents per hot drink even the coffee was bringing in money.

Loki had genuinely been offended.

“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t jeopardize the store’s reputation like that. I’m a professional. I hoped I’d demonstrated that by now. I only sleep with people I actually know.”

Darcy had felt bad about that. But she knew that if she wasn’t missing batted eyelashes as another misshapen hat was held up for Loki’s approval or smiles when he took someone’s hands in his own, manipulating them to correct their technique, then Loki certainly wasn’t missing them. It was like he had a radar for this stuff. But he was stoic and unmoving in the face of it, and by the time they gave up on attracting him most were hooked by the social aspect of knit club or the weirdly addictive nature of knitting itself.

And Loki covering some of the classes had given Darcy the time to revolutionize the entire running of the store. They had an actual computer now, internet installed (though of course Loki had had wifi set up for his apartment in the first month of living there), a website and facebook page. She could order yarn wholesale online, which was far easier than the catalogue system her aunt had used. Digitalizing the accounts, online banking, everything was more efficient and easier, assuming no IT problems. Between them they were running the store better than it had ever been run.

 _And a good thing too_ , Darcy mused to herself. _Since I’m going to be an unofficial wedding planner for the next three months._

She should have guessed that Jane would be remarkably, infuriatingly calm about the whole thing.


	4. Chapter 4

The ring was beautiful, Darcy had to admit. Simple and elegant, a single blue-tinged stone set in silver.

“I prepared lists and I have a notebook,” Darcy said proudly as Jane sat on her couch.

“Whatever for?” Jane asked, genuinely surprised.

“To help. With the planning. Of the wedding.”

“Oh, that…”

Jane and Thor had selected a venue, a relatively small hotel upstate where they could have the wedding and reception and guests could stay afterwards.

“It’ll be nice,” Jane said. “Intimate. We’re only having close family and good friends. Though Thor basically seems to think everyone he’s ever met is a good friend. He’s even invited one of his ex-girlfriends.”

“Oh. That seems…weird?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve met her, they had a thing in high school but it didn’t work out and now they’re just good friends. She’s really nice actually. She’s called Sif.”

Darcy carefully managed her expression so as to not reveal that she knew not only who Sif was, but rather more about her than a stranger probably should. _I’ll have to practice my very best ‘I definitely don’t know you’ve slept with both the groom and the best man’ face…_

“OK, so Thor’s parents, your parents-“

“Just my dad,” Jane clarified. “My mom can’t make it over from England. So just him and my step-mom.”

“…Are you OK about that?”

“Hm?”

“Your mom not seeing you on your big day?”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, it would be nice and all but…” She quirked a smile. “At least this way I don’t have to deal with my mom and dad having to be civil to each other. And my dad can make a speech and hopefully not make any pointed comments. And that’s better than what Thor has to deal with…”

Darcy looked wary. “What? I thought his parents were super-happy, advertisement for matrimony types?”

“Oh, they are. But Thor… He gets on really well with his mom but he’s only OK with his dad. They’re normally fine but their conversation is really stilted and cautious. Basically Thor blames him for not telling Loki about the whole adoption thing in the right way or early enough or something and so he sort of blames him for Loki running away so often and all that fall-out. They’re pretty much at peace these days. Even Loki seems to be fine being in the same room as his parents right now, which hasn’t been the case in a while. He always got on with their mom, though, I’ll give him that. He always showed up to her birthday parties, usually out of the blue and then he’d vanish again without anyone knowing where to… Half the time no one had even told him where the party was happening, though I think Thor probably sent surreptitious texts.” She smiled more broadly. “Still, all in the past now. It’ll be fine, I’m sure. And Thor is over the moon about having his family there. Just the idea of it is making him giddy.”

 _I hope so_ , Darcy thought _. I could do without having to deal with a family feud._

“OK so… Thor’s parents, your dad and step-mom, Loki, me… Who are the other bridesmaids for the top table? And the ushers?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making a seating plan. Getting it done early saves panic and fighting later.” She tapped one of the bridal magazines. “It says so right in there. You can check if you like.”

“Right. OK, well, actually… You’re my only bridesmaid. You’re the only person I wanted.”

“Oh.” Darcy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Oh, OK. Thanks, babe. If that’s what you want.”

“It is. And while Thor has a guest list the length of his arm, he doesn’t want anyone to feel like they’re being left out. So we agreed no ushers. Just Loki as best man, that’s it.”

“Right. Fine.” Jane frowned slightly at her. “What? I get it. Small and close.”

“We don’t want anything too fancy, Darce. This is about me and Thor, no one else. Simple, nice, easy. And as our respective best friends we want you to be there, because you’re important to us.”

“Loki is Thor’s best friend?”

“Well… yeah? I mean, I know it’s weird considering all the fighting but they’re really getting on these days. It’s nice. It’s almost too nice, I keep waiting for it to come crashing down.”

“OK. So that’s it for the top table. Who else?”

Jane didn’t have many guests. Some friends of hers from college, some from the lab she was working in. Thor had a lot more, old friends from high school, one or two from practically every job he’d ever worked.

“Yeah, I’m hoping some of them can’t make it, just so my side doesn’t look so empty,” Jane said when Darcy commented on this. “Though I’ve met a few of them and they’re all so nice and they all adore Thor so I can’t grudge any of them being there…”

“To be fair, pretty much everyone adores Thor.” She carefully didn’t mention that she’d met some of Thor’s friends coming down from Loki’s apartment at one time or another. Keeping in touch with everyone you’d ever met seemed to be something of a family tradition. Just Thor didn’t tend to sleep with them.

“How soon should we send out invites?” Jane asked.

“Soon I think. As soon as possible really. And remember to ask if anyone has any specific dietary requirements, it’ll help with planning the menu. Now, here’s my list of potential color schemes, and we should start to think about flowers and wedding favors…”

 “And dresses? You know how very much I’m looking forward to that…” Darcy caught the sarcasm in Jane’s voice. She wasn’t exactly known for her dedication to fashion.

“It’s a necessary evil, Jane. You’ll look totally hot, Thor will faint at the sight of you, trust me. That is my goal.”

“And what are you thinking of wearing?”

“Huh?”

“I think as sole bridesmaid, you should pick your own dress. Something you like and that suits you. But you’re not allowed to upstage me. That’s my only rule.”

“Pick a day and we’ll go shopping. Loki can run the store, it’ll be fine. We’ll get all the free champagne we can get and try on everything. That’s what happens in bridal stores, right?”

“Unless I’ve been misled by romcoms all these years, yes. It’ll be fun, right?”

“Absolutely.”


	5. Chapter 5

It was not fun.

This was far from Darcy’s idea of fun and she was pretty sure it was far from Jane’s as well judging by her face as she tried on yet another gown designed for some kind of six foot goddess, not someone of Jane’s stature.

The store assistant pursed her lips and mumbled something about taking the skirt up.

Jane sighed. “Do you have smaller ones? Like a petite range or something?”

The assistant bustled off. Jane sat down on a chaise-longue next to Darcy in a whirl of lacey skirts.

“Why do they have to be so impractical, Darcy?”

“I have no idea. It’s what’s done, isn’t it? You look like a Disney princess on your wedding day and you don’t care how uncomfortable you are so long as you have the pictures to show off.”

“Never mind the discomfort, think of the expense…” Jane said. “I still have college debt to pay off, I shouldn’t even be thinking about this kind of thing. I mean, we’re getting the hall rental cheap because Thor knows the manager but… He won’t accept a penny from his parents, even though they want to help, he just won’t.”

“Well, he’s worked hard to be where he is, it makes sense that he wants to do it himself.”

She knew Thor had been in line to inherit the family business. She wasn’t sure what said business was exactly, something to do with land or property. She knew he had turned it down. She knew Loki hadn’t been around to be asked so the main running of it had passed to one of their cousins. She wasn’t sure how Loki felt about this but he didn’t exactly mention it often. He took long enough to get used to Thor being a regular fixture in his life; their father might as well not have existed. It wasn’t an accident that Darcy had placed Loki between Thor and their mom on the seating plan in the hopes of avoiding any contact with Odin.

“I just… I keep coming back to how much this is going to cost us.” Jane was continuing. “Hall rental even on a discount, dinner for guests, paying the wedding band, flowers, wedding favors… It all adds up and I just can’t bring myself to spend a thousand dollars on a gown I’m only going to wear once. The guilt would eat me alive.”

She looked at Darcy desperately.

“OK,” Darcy said. “OK, let’s get out of here, go back to the store, make Loki have coffee ready for us and we’ll try looking on eBay for last season or secondhand dresses, right? Just as hot but way, way cheaper.”

“Thank you. Could you unzip me please? I want out of this before they say I wore it so long I bought it…”

She headed back to the changing room once released. Darcy texted Loki to warn him of their imminent arrival but that didn’t stop him seeming surprised when they walked in the door.

“What happened to dress shopping?” he asked.

“Dress shopping sucked.” Darcy said. “Can we have coffee please?”

She was distantly aware that the shower was running upstairs. Which meant Loki had someone round and either they’d stayed over last night or he’d been busy over lunch. She squinted at his hair as he brought coffee. Not damp, no evidence of being blow-dried today. Last night then.

 _God, I’m becoming some kind of Loki sex detective_.

 “What’s your wifi password?” she asked him. “We’re going to do this the new way. The modern way. With no changing rooms and no human interaction.”

He said he wasn’t sure and went upstairs to check the router. Darcy heard the shower shut off. It took Loki longer than necessary to come back downstairs. Almost exactly the amount of time it would take to warn someone that your boss and your brother’s girlfriend were downstairs and that some discretion might be mutually beneficial right about now, in fact.

“Here,” he said, handing her a scrap of paper with the code scrawled on it. “By the way, Tony’s upstairs.”

“Who’s Tony?” Jane asked into her mug.

“A friend.” Loki said.

Jane nodded. She wasn’t one to pry into other people’s business.

They had eBay loaded up on Jane’s aging college laptop by the time Tony appeared.

“Hey,” he said, all easy manners and welcoming. “How’s it going? Tony, I’m a friend of Loki’s.”

Jane shook his proffered hand. “Jane. I’m a friend of Darcy’s.”

Tony laughed and glanced at Darcy, clearly having the same thought as her. _Not the same kind of friend; Jane and I are not fucking._

“Hey, I think I’ve heard of you,” he resumed, sitting on the opposite bench. “Thor’s girlfriend, right? Yeah, definitely. Sorry, fiancée, congratulations on the approaching wedding, by the way…”

This was how Tony always was. A hurricane of affability and charm, so much so that you didn’t even notice what he was saying half the time. He was funny though. Darcy liked him, for all that he never paid for coffee.

They would make a lot of money out of Tony if he paid for all the coffee he drank.

“So what was so bad about dress shopping?” he asked.

“Have you ever gone somewhere and just felt like you aren’t meant to be there? Like, this store is not for you, you’re not the right kind of people to be here, that kind of thing?” Jane said.

“No, I generally ignore that feeling and carve out a niche for myself wherever I end up. Saves time.”

Yeah, Tony was also kind of arrogant. But he was arrogant in a charming way.

“It just wasn’t a place for someone who doesn’t know the difference between ivory and white.”

“Ivory is slightly less white than white.” Loki piped up from behind the cash register.

Jane looked at him suspiciously. He gestured to the pile of bridal magazines in front of him.

“People keep asking me who the lucky girl is. I keep saying my brother’s girlfriend. The looks are priceless.” he said.

Darcy smiled but felt her stomach lurch slightly. Jane and Loki’s relationship was growing to be something resembling grudging respect. Loki had accepted her place in Thor’s life and she did likewise, but they were both aware of the other’s power to emotionally destroy Thor at any moment and they were wary of each other.

Darcy couldn’t help feeling that where Jane was protective of Thor, Loki was just jealous that someone else had that power that was usually reserved just for him.

The wedding was potentially very dangerous ground.

“Right, I know you don’t want to, but dresses. Focus, Jane.” she said, not at all trying to distract anyone.

It took them upwards of two hours, during which time out of desperation for something to do Loki decided to teach Tony to knit, an experiment which ended with Tony tying Loki’s wrists together with chunky acrylic yarn before he had to leave to some kind of prior engagement, but Jane finally ordered a dress. Something simple, that looked like she’d be able to walk without difficulty and that wasn’t going to bankrupt her.

“Is it OK that I ask for it to be sent here?” Jane asked, typing in her card details.

“Here, here? To the Yarn Barn?”

“Well, yeah. You’ll be here to sign for it, and there’s no chance of Thor getting curious and looking at it.”

“Sure, no problem, if that’s easier for you.”

“By the way, Loki?” Jane said, glancing up. “Do you want a plus one for the wedding? Because that wouldn’t be a problem.”

Loki stared at her. He’d managed to get the first knot of yarn untied with his teeth and was now trying to twist his hand around in a way Darcy was pretty sure wasn’t anatomically possible. And she definitely wasn’t thinking about how this seemed like a practiced move because Loki had been tied up before, no, not at all…

“Pardon?” he asked eventually.

“I just wondered if you’d like to bring… a friend… to the wedding.”

The pause wasn’t so much pregnant as a mother of five.

“No. Thank you.”

“OK. It’s cool either way, if you change your mind.”

“I won’t. Trust me.”

He managed to wriggle one wrist free, the left one, and set about untying the knots around his right.

“OK then. Right, Darce, your turn now.”

“What? No, I don’t want a plus one either.” Darcy had assumed this ordeal was over.

“Not that. Dress. You need to pick a bridesmaids dress. What color do you want?”

_Well, shit._


	6. Chapter 6

“I still can’t believe you went with pink.” Loki said when the dresses arrived.

“It’s cerise.” Darcy retorted.

“Yeah, yeah…”

“Well, what color would you have gone with?”

“Green.”

“Everything you own is green. Or black.”

“Apparently it’s frowned upon to wear black at weddings.”

Darcy opened the packaging.

_Just to check on them._

Loki smirked at her. “You want to try it on, don’t you?”

“Well, I should, to make sure I don’t need it altered…”

“Not that. You want to try on Jane’s dress.”

“No.”

“Go on, I won’t tell anyone. You just want to know if wearing a wedding dress is all it’s cracked up to be…”

“Firstly, no. Secondly, this is in Jane’s size. I am not Jane’s size. Therefore I will not be trying on her dress because it won’t fit in a million years. My own on the other hand…”

She changed in the office. The dress was nice, it didn’t seem like she’d have to lose weight for it or wear too high a pair of heels. She wished she could see it properly though. Yarn stores didn’t have mirrors.

“Hey, Lokes, take a picture of me, I want to see.” she said, coming out of the room.

He looked her up and down and made an approving noise.

“I take it back. Yay, pink.”

“Cerise!”

“Whatever.” He took a picture on his phone and passed it across to her.

She looked at herself, standing slightly awkwardly in her socks. It was a good color, setting off her dark hair falling across her shoulders, the neckline low enough to give an idea of cleavage but not too much.

“It needs a jacket or something, but I think with the right accessories it will work. And I think I should get contacts for the occasion.” She handed his phone back.

“What’s Jane’s number? I’m going to send this to her for approval.”

“You don’t have Jane’s number?”

“No. I generally have no reason to communicate with her.”

“You really should. What if you can’t get hold of Thor for whatever reason and you need to?”

“Good job I’m getting it now then.”

Darcy read it out from her own contact list and he dutifully saved it. Jane replied quickly.

“She says you look nice and that she’ll be round later to try hers on. And that she has bad news about the flowers but she’ll tell you then.”

Darcy’s head whipped round.

“What bad news about the flowers?”

“That’s all she said.”

“Seriously, that’s it?”

“Well, she also said ‘Hey Loki, I guess that’s you’ but I thought I could skip that.”

Darcy hadn’t quite started to think about flowers. She had images of Jane holding a beautiful bouquet of _somethings_ and she assumed there would need to be buttonholes for Thor and Loki at least but she thought she could get to that nearer the time. The looming bachelorette party had taken priority.

_God, that’s soon. I wish I knew more of Jane’s friends to invite._

“Calm down. It’ll be fine, whatever it is, I’m sure it doesn’t matter.” Loki was saying. “And you look good. Really good.”

“You have to say that, I pay your wages.”

“No, I mean it. You look great.”

It had been several months since he’d last made a pass at her. The night when he’d drunkenly confessed his love for Thor to her had been the last come to think of it. She wasn’t sure if this was a sort of respect for her boundaries, which she felt she had made clear, or if he was just weird about it now that she knew his deepest secret.

She sort of wanted to talk about it, but at the same time…

Sometimes she wondered what she would do if he mentioned it again. The more important the store became in her life, the less time she had for meeting people or a relationship in general. Even if it was more efficient these days, and several days were still totally dead in terms of customers, it took up enough of her time. She basically treated knit class as socializing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been somewhere that wasn’t the store or her own apartment or Jane and Thor’s place. So sometimes she wondered if it wouldn’t be convenient to have Loki on hand for a bit of stress relief through no-feelings-attached sex.

She genuinely didn’t know whether she would or not.

Sometimes she wanted him to ask just to find out what her reaction would be.

She couldn’t bring herself to ask him.

Jane arrived after work to try on her dress. It would look perfect with the right shoes and with her hair done, but she looked incredible already. Even Loki cracked a smile when he saw her.

“What did I say?” Darcy said. “Totally hot. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good,” Jane said. “It’s not like I never wear dresses but basically I never wear dresses so… this is nice.” She turned to Loki. “Do you… think Thor will like it?”

“Thor loves you,” Loki said. “To him it won’t matter what you wear. He’s good like that.”

Jane smiled. For the first time Darcy realized how hard it must be for her. Meeting Loki and being accepted by him had to be way harder than meeting Thor’s parents. As far as she could tell, Odin and Frigga didn’t actually have much influence on Thor’s life. If they did he’d be running the company. But Loki? Thor would die for him. Darcy knew she would never fully understand why but it was a fact. And Jane knew it. So for Loki to smile at her and express happiness that she was marrying his brother…

It was a rare and precious moment between them and Darcy was loath to shatter it.

“What’s this about the flowers? You said there was a problem?” she asked, wincing.

“Oh, yeah. You’re not going to like this.”

“What?”

“We’re not allowed to bring actual flowers into the venue.”

“What? Why not?”

“I’m not even sure. I think someone on the staff as really bad hayfever or something?”

“It had better be really bad if they’re going to stop you having flowers at your wedding. It better be life-threatening hayfever.”

“It’s fine, Darce. After all it’s one fewer thing to worry about.”

“Yeah, but a wedding with no flowers? God…”

“You could… make them…” Loki said.

The ladies stared at him.

“Darcy could knit them,” he clarified. “She could knit a bouquet, she could knit little button holes… You could make them the wedding favors, a knitted bloom for everyone to take home. And they wouldn’t die. Ever. A great representation of your love.”

“Well, romantic as that would be…” Darcy began before seeing the look in Jane’s eyes.

“Ooh, it would be so romantic! Darcy, would you?”

She looked into her best friend’s face. Her best friend who was wearing a wedding dress. Her best friend who just wanted to marry her boyfriend and be happy.

She sighed.

“Sure. How many do you need? Bouquet for you, something for me, buttonholes for Thor and Loki and little things for all the guests? How many guests?”

“In total? About eighty.”

“Right. The simplest flower pattern I know takes about twenty minutes to make a little corsage type rose thing that would do as a gift and as buttonholes. So twenty times eighty…”

“1600.” Loki supplied.

“Right. Divided by 60…” She got out her phone to calculate it. “26 and three quarter hours. Plus time to make a bouquet… Let’s call it 40 hours. So approximately two days of solid knitting between now and the wedding which is in a month’s time? Fine. Yes. Fine. I can do this.”

Jane kissed her on the cheek.

“You are a lifesaver. And it’ll be so different from what everyone else has at their weddings.”

“OK, OK. In return can you give me anyone else who you want at your bachelorette party? It’s really small right now…”

“Why, who do you have?”

“Me. You. Betty and Pepper, who I think I’ve met but I’m not sure… And that’s it.”

“Hmm…” Jane genuinely seemed to give this some thought. “We should probably invite Sif.”

“Sif? Thor’s ex Sif?”

“Yeah. Well, I figure she won’t be going to the bachelor party because of that stupid ‘boys only’ rule.”

Loki shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”

“Yeah, well,” Jane continued. “She’s really nice and she’s one of Thor’s best friends and I want to include her.”

“OK,” Darcy said. “Fine. I’ll text Thor for her number and I’ll invite her.”

“Thanks. It’ll be nice. And I’m sure whatever you have planned will be great. Tell me nothing though, I want the surprise.”

Darcy smiled, trying to pretend she had something planned.


	7. Chapter 7

“So can my buttonhole be green?” Loki asked once Jane had left.

Darcy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. Mine will be too, we’ll match. Team Wedding.”

“You know, you could get Sif’s details from me…”

“I know but I don’t know if Jane knows about you and her so I figured it was safer this way.”

“Makes sense. Thanks.”

“Why isn’t she going to the bachelor party anyway? She’s Thor’s friend.”

“No girls allowed.”

“Loki…”

“OK, fine, I didn’t want to spend the evening with her. I haven’t seen her since I slept with her. I thought it would be awkward.”

“Wait, what? Why? You sleep with lots of people and you’re never nervous about them. What’s different about her?”

“…I don’t want to tell you.”

“Seriously? God, what the hell could it be? Don’t make me guess, you know I will.”

“Drop it, Darcy.”

“No, really, my curiosity is piqued now. I know a lot about your depravity, and I mean a LOT. You have threesomes, possibly moresomes; you tie people up; you get tied up; you have an exhibitionist streak to the point that you let one of your boy-toys blow you right behind that desk. I’ve seen bite marks on your neck, scratches all over you, rope burn round your wrists… You like it rough, huh? So what could you possibly be embarrassed about?”

“I didn’t know you cared,” he snarled, rounding on her. “Though don’t think I haven’t seen you looking. I almost thought maybe you wanted a piece of me yourself.”

She felt her cheeks flush.

“Oh, speechless now? And I was so enjoying your dirty talk.” He walked her up against the wall, putting one hand next to her head, boxing her in. “Come on, Darcy. Tell me how you’d fuck me. Go on, tell me. How would it go?”

She steeled herself. _How dare he think he can intimidate me…_

“Fine,” she said. “The first time, I’d have you on your back, your hands tied above your head so you couldn’t even think about touching me, and I’d ride you hard, leaving scratches all down your chest…”

“Oh, come on, how unimaginative, I expect better. After all, you’ve had such a long time to think about it,” he breathed, inches from her face.

“If you dared to come before I was done, I’d crawl up the bed and make you finish me off with your tongue. I bet you’re really good at it, I bet you wouldn’t stop until I was _screaming_ for you…”

And suddenly that tongue was in her mouth and his hands were in her hair and at the back of her neck and she was having flashbacks to that night so many months ago when he’d drunkenly made a move on her.

She made a noise of discomfort against his lips and he instantly drew back.

“What?” he asked.

“This is insane,” she said. “This is insane. We were fighting and now we’re…” she trailed off.

“I thought you wanted to…”

“I do. I think. Maybe, I’m not sure… Can I think about it for a while?”

He drew her closer to him. “How long’s a while?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m… I’m sorry.”

She broke from his grasp and tried to straighten her shirt.

“It’s OK,” he said. “If you don’t want to or you’re not ready, it’s fine. It’s not a problem.”

“Sorry, it’s not… If I ever decide that yes, I want to sleep with you… You’ll be the first to know.”

“I look forward to that eventuality.”

She sighed. “OK. Yeah. Good. We’re… yeah…”

He looked sheepish. “Look, Darcy… The reason I didn’t want to see Sif… It’s because… When we fucked I…”

“What?”

“After a while, during it, I… I made her call me ‘Thor’.” he said quietly.

She stared at him, stunned.

“That is not at all what I expected.” she said.

He shrugged. “Well, she was being so vocal, like she always was and I had memories of being in the next room hearing her with _him_ and, like… those were my earliest memories of sexual feelings and so I wanted them back and… I asked her to call me Thor and say the things she used to say to him.”

“And what?”

“Well, she looked at me like ‘What the actual fuck, you deviant little shit?’ but she… she went with it…”

“And did it work?”

“How do you mean?”

“Did you get off on that?”

“Well, I got off, but I think that was more to do with fucking someone as hot as Sif more than creepily role-playing my brother. It was weird. I left right after. And that was the last time I saw Sif so maybe now you’ll understand why I want to put off seeing her, and especially seeing her in Thor’s company, for as long as humanly possible.”

“I’m starting to get an idea.”

_And keeping you guys out of awkwardness is yet another thing to add to my list of things to do at this wedding._


	8. Chapter 8

Sif was… lovely.

Darcy had worried that having Thor’s ex at Jane’s bachelor party was going to be horribly awkward but it really wasn’t. Eventually, on the basis that Jane had made it quite clear that she didn’t want anything too expensive or debauched, she’d booked a table for the five of them at a nice restaurant with a cocktail bar for a sophisticated and chilled evening.

Darcy vaguely recalled Jane’s other friends, Betty from the lab and Pepper who went to high school with her. But she decided to make a special effort to talk to Sif, as the outsider of the group.

She felt quite intimidated to start with; Sif was tall and effortlessly graceful. And beautiful. But she was very friendly too. She was genuinely interested in Jane, genuinely happy for her, genuinely delighted to have been invited to spend time with her before the wedding, genuinely wanted to know about her best friend’s fiancée.

Darcy could easily see why she and Thor had dated. They must have been the biggest power couple in their whole high school. She could also see how right Loki had been in his description of her as hot. Sif unconsciously ran a hand through her cropped hair, a relic left over from the time Loki’s jealousy had got the better of him. She’d made that violent act her strength.

 _Not that I know about that_ , Darcy reminded herself.

“So how do you know Jane?” Sif asked her.

“Oh, you know. I needed some college credits and she needed someone to monitor an experiment overnight. We hung out afterwards. A few years later and here we are.”

“What was your major?”

“Political science. And now I run a yarn store. Obvious career move right there.”

“Oh, you’re the yarn store manager! So you’re the one who finally got Loki under control.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say under control exactly…”

“Don’t put yourself down. Thor raves about you. He thinks you’re some kind of genius.”

“Honestly, I didn’t do anything. Loki just… likes it there and wants to stay, that’s all.”

“You must be a pretty big part of that. I’ve never known him to stay in one place longer than about three months.”

Darcy had never wanted to change a subject more in her entire life.

“What do you do, Sif?” she asked, sipping her drink.

“I work for them. For Thor’s family. They’ve been really good to me, I owe them a lot. Like…” she glanced around slightly before lowering her voice. “You know that Thor and I dated a little during high school, right?”

“Yeah, Jane mentioned that.”

“Well, my final years of high school were pretty tough. I was in a bad place personally, there were some family things and so on, and I didn’t like being at home much so I hung out with Thor as much as I could. So when his dad wanted him to go touring the building sites and the surveyors I begged to be allowed to go too and since Thor wasn’t actually that interested in the business Odin figured, sure, having his girlfriend around might make him more likely to pay attention. He didn’t, but I did. After a while I realized that I could understand this stuff and make it my job and so I just flat out asked if I could work for them. This was after me and Thor broke up so I wasn’t hopeful but they did, they started me at the bottom of the surveyors’ office, like, lower than the interns and I’ve worked my way up. I owe them so much. They even lent me money so I could move out of my parents’ place. It showed me that I could rely on myself. Odin’s a little confrontational but Frigga is such a sweetheart. I feel like I’m more part of their family than my own.”

Darcy didn’t want to think that maybe Odin had been trying to push Sif and Thor together, but she couldn’t quite shift the feeling. Creating the heirs to his property empire.

“What’s the new boss like, now that Odin’s retired?”

“Balder? He’s fine. A little surprised to be in charge, I think, but Odin wanted to keep it in the family.”

The unspoken idea that Sif herself should have been considered as an option hung in the air. Darcy found herself briefly wondering how a woman like this, so in control and self-reliant had ended up in bed with Loki.

Then she remembered that it was probably only a matter of time before she found herself in the same position.

So to speak.

She almost wanted to ask Sif how it had ever come about, but that would mean admitting she knew what had happened and that was going to be horribly awkward.

Fortunately, Jane had become pleasantly tipsy and chose that moment to move round the table to throw her arms around Darcy and tell her what a good friend she was.

Sif smiled at Jane indulgently. It was pretty obvious she liked her. Most people did like Jane, she was sweet and passionate. Though it was probably how happy she made Thor that particularly recommended her to Sif.

“They’re going to be so happy,” she said, wistfully.

“I hope so.” Darcy replied.

Which made it all the more strange when Jane burst into the store the next morning practically in tears.


	9. Chapter 9

_I didn’t even have that many cocktails last night, this headache is bullshit…_

“Good morning,” Loki said cheerfully as she slumped onto one of the benches. “Party went well I see.”

Darcy grunted. The store was full of tiny knitted blossoms in pink, blue and red; Loki had already claimed his deep green one. The special silk yarn she’d got in for them had cost rather a lot, but she could make several from one skein. There were still a good twenty to go before she’d be done. Her hands ached with it; she was definitely developing carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive strain injuries or something. Loki brought her coffee.

“What about the boys?” she croaked. “How was it?”

“Well, you know. We went into the woods, we did manly things involving weapons and paint, we then ate our body weight in meat and drank a heroic amount of cheap beer and by the end of the night everyone was either singing or crying or both. A riotous success, even if I did have some difficulties getting Thor in his front door. He’s a very insistent drunk and he did not want to go home.”

“He wanted to stay out all night?”

“No, he wanted to come here, oddly enough. Kept talking to me like I wasn’t me. You know, ‘It’s fine, let’s go to Loki’s place! He won’t mind me sleeping on his couch.’ And when I insisted that no, he should definitely go home, for one thing I don’t even have a couch, he stared at me like he hadn’t seen me in years and… long story short there was some confusion but I left him snoring in his own bed and snuck out. Which is how I surmised that the bachelorettes had out-done us in the hedonism stakes, since Jane wasn’t home.”

“Yeah, we… Cocktails. Dinner.” She flinched. “Karaoke bar… Bad decisions, head hurts now…”

“Aw… If you want to take a nap, my bed’s empty upstairs.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah, I was too tired last night to bother seeing if anyone was up for anything…”

“No, I meant would it be OK for me to go lie down for a while in your bed? It’s my turn to take Saturday knit class.”

“I’m sure I can handle it. You deserve a rest, you’ve been run off your feet with yarn orders and caterers and seating plans. Go to bed.”

She hadn’t managed to pack her things away when Jane burst through the door.

“Where is he?” she demanded, striding into Loki’s personal space. “What did you do? What did you _say_?”

There was a moment where Darcy genuinely thought Jane would punch him. She’d never seen her friend so angry.

“Where is he?” she repeated.

Loki gripped Jane’s shoulders. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jane’s eyes flicked back and forth across his face, looking for the lie, before she crumbled, sobbing desperately against his chest. He stroked her hair absently and looked to Darcy in desperation.

“Jane,” she said, softly. “Sit down. Deep breaths. What’s happened?”

“It’s Thor…” Jane said, her voice choked and muffled against Loki’s shirt. “He was in bed when I got home but now he’s gone and I don’t… I don’t know…”

Loki half-walked, half-carried her to the bench and set her down next to Darcy. His eyes were manic as he took one of Jane’s hands in both of his, kneeling in front of her.

“I swear, I had nothing to do with this, and I promise we will find him.”

“His phone was charging next to the bed. We can’t even call him.”

“Did he say anything strange last night?” Darcy asked. Suddenly her hangover didn’t seem so bad after all.

Loki shook his head slowly. “Nothing I noticed, really. He was… he was drunk. He was saying that he regretted nothing and that everything was going to be good. He kept repeating that. I just thought he was excited about getting married, but…”

“But?” Jane said.

“Haven’t you noticed how nervous he’s been? It’s stressing him out.”

“He’s supposed to be stressed, he’s about to get married, that’s normal.” Jane was still taking shuddering breaths as she tried to get a grip on her emotions.

“No, more than that. He’s very anxious about the wedding.”

“Are you saying that… he doesn’t want to marry me?”

Loki laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jane. He’s insecure. He’s scared that you’ll leave him. He’s worried and he’s thinking about the past a lot and…” He looked up suddenly. “I think I know where he is.”

“What?” Darcy said, incredulously.

“Darcy, get your coat. And give me your car keys, I’ll drive. You’re too hungover.”

“But what about the store? We can’t just close.”

“I think on this occasion we can. I’ll leave a sign in the door. Jane, I know this is going to be hard but I need for you to go home and wait there.”

“No, I want to come with you to find him.” she insisted.

“I know you do, but just think, if Thor comes home and we’re all still out there we’ll be worried sick while in fact he’s safe at home, not realizing that we’re looking for him. It’s better if you go and wait and then if he comes back you’ll be there. Do you understand?”

She took a little more convincing but eventually she agreed to be driven back to her apartment to wait.

Loki drove out of town in silence, Darcy slumped in the passenger seat.

“You should sleep,” he said eventually. “If I’m right he’s about half an hour away.”

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

“To your parent’s place? But that’s way further than a half hour.”

“No, not that home. To where we used to live. When we were kids. Before mom and… Before they moved to their current house. We lived in the middle of nowhere, close enough to the city for work and school but far enough out that we didn’t have stuff like neighbors or convenience stores…”

“Why would Thor be there?”

“There’s a lake nearby. He loved that lake. He was always hanging out there, when he wanted to think.”

“How would he have got there?”

Loki shrugged. “Bus, I guess. If I’m right, he’s trying to go back to the start, trying to think things over.”

“Why?”

“Because… because he thinks he’s a failure. And he thinks Jane deserves more than that.”

“A failure? Him?”

Loki drummed his thumbs nervously on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I know, it’s crazy, I told him last night, it’s crazy. But… he was practically bred to take over the business. Groomed for it, pretty much. It’s what he was supposed to do, it’s what he was born to do. And he decided he didn’t want it. Left home, did things his way, made his own way in the world.”

“I don’t understand. How is that failing?”

“It’s not. But times are hard for him and Jane and he knows… he knows that if he’d made a different choice he’d be able to support her, let her live the way he thinks she deserves. Never mind that she doesn’t want that, she wants him.”

“If he’d taken over the business he’d never have met Jane.” Darcy pointed out.

“Irony strikes yet again.”

“What about you?” she asked quietly after a pause. “What were you born to do?”

He sighed. “Go to sleep, Darcy.”

“I think… I think you were born to look after him.”

He said nothing and she drifted into welcome sleep. She jerked awake when he pulled on the parking brake.

“Is he here?” she asked, her voice croaky again. She could see no sign of anyone on the bank.

Loki pointed. There was something in the water.

“Do you have anything resembling a towel in this car?” he asked.

“I have a blanket in the back seat?”

He nodded. “I’m sure he’ll be fine using his shirt. Stay here.”

He got out of the car, hair whipped up by the wind. Darcy couldn’t imagine how cold the water was.

She watched as Loki approached the edge, waving and shouting. The distant blonde head that was Thor looked at him and beckoned.

Loki seemed to consider for a moment before resignedly stripping naked and walking into the water.


	10. Chapter 10

Darcy could only watch as Loki swam out towards Thor. They treaded water for a while, obviously discussing. Eventually, after what felt like far too long for them to have been out there, they started moving back to the shore.

Thor had at least kept his boxers on. Darcy still looked away to give them some privacy as they used their shirts as makeshift towels and awkwardly pulled jeans over still damp skin. Thor had hidden his clothes behind a rock. The wind had scattered Loki’s across the beach.

They eventually climbed into the back seat, shirtless under their coats and teeth chattering.

“See if we get hypothermia, I will actually kill you…” Loki was saying, throwing his wet shirt into the footwell. They huddled under Darcy’s blanket, an old moth-eaten thing that had been in the car when she’d bought it second hand. She’d washed it since then but it still wasn’t ideal.

“Hey, Thor,” Darcy said. “How’s it going?”

“Better.” was all he said.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while.

“Darcy, I’m sorry to ask this of you,” Loki said, waking her from the slight doze she’d fallen back into. “But we’re really rather cold. Could you come back here and share some body heat with us?”

She didn’t want to go outside so awkwardly scrambled through to the backseat and shuffled in next to Loki.

“I can’t help thinking it’s rather unfair that we’re shirtless and you’re not…” Loki said.

Thor swatted him on the arm but Darcy was already pulling her shirt off. If he wanted to play that game, she’d play that game. She wasn’t even wearing a nice bra; it was an old gray thing but incredibly comfortable. Thor looked out of the window until she was under the blanket. Loki ran a hand down her thigh and she elbowed him hard in the ribs, knowing he was still bruised from paintball the day before.

“Ready to go home soon, Thor?” she asked. “Jane’s worried.”

“Yeah, I’m… I’m just…”

“An idiot?” Loki supplied.

Thor huffed. “Yeah. I freaked out. I’m sorry, I just wanted to think. And you’re right. You’re right. This is what I want. I want to marry Jane and I want to be with her and even if it’s hard, it’s what I want. I need to stop living in the past and asking ‘what if’. This is real. This is what matters.”

His eyes were wet and Darcy found herself wishing she could make everything alright for him.

“How did you know where I was?” he asked.

“You always came here when things got bad.” Loki said quietly. “When I was little, if there was fighting, you used to take my hand and take me here to wait for things to blow over. We took the tent once; camped out here for two days. I remember when you were 17 and you’d just told… You’d just told Dad that you didn’t want to inherit the business and he went crazy, way worse than I’d ever seen him, and you just ran out of the house. You told me later that you came here.” He paused for a while. “And when I found out that I was adopted, I came here. You came after me. Don’t you remember?”

Thor wrapped his arm around Loki’s shoulders and drew him closer. Loki’s hand found Darcy’s under the blanket. _Something to ground him_ , she realized.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” Thor whispered. “I didn’t know what to do except follow you, I was so scared about what you would do to yourself and you just kept screaming and all I could do was hold you down to stop you running into the water. And eventually you stopped fighting and we fell asleep out on the shore and when I woke up you were gone. It was a week before you came home. I thought… I thought you’d drowned yourself. I thought I’d lost you.”

 _I shouldn’t be here,_ Darcy thought. _This is private, I shouldn’t be here._ She tried to make her breathing as silent as possible. Tears were gently falling from Loki’s eyes, unheeded, onto Thor’s chest.

“I wouldn’t have…” Loki said. “I wouldn’t… Not with you there.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

Darcy held her breath.

“I know.”

Thor ran his huge fingers through Loki’s tangled hair and made eye contact with Darcy over his head. He smiled sadly at her.

“You’ve returned the favor now, anyway.” he said.

Loki shook his head. “You’d have been fine. You’d have come to your senses eventually.”

“You helped.”

“Yeah, well. Someone has to watch out for you.”

Thor shifted round in his seat and took Loki’s face in both his hands. He wiped a tear from Loki’s cheek with a sweep of his thumb before gently, chastely kissing him on the lips. Loki all but shuddered, his eyes screwed shut.

“I think we should go home. I think I should apologize to Jane.” Thor said.

Loki nodded, eyes still closed. “You two should stay back here. Stay under the blanket. Keep warm.” he said, giving Darcy’s hand a quick squeeze before moving to the driver’s seat far more gracefully than she had managed.

At Thor’s request, she pulled her shirt back on before moving to the middle seat, closer to him. His arms were still cold, his hair still damp. He moved until her head was gently resting on his shoulder. His breathing evened out and she realized he was asleep. He had to be exhausted.

“Should he be sleeping?” she asked. “Isn’t that a bad thing to do with potential hypothermia?”

Loki made a non-committal noise. “Is he still shivering?”

“No.”

“I think he’s probably fine. Tell me if he stops breathing though.”

Darcy was quiet for a few more minutes. “He…definitely knows, doesn’t he?” she said eventually.

“Hmmm?”

“That you love him.”

“Yeah.”

 “Is that alright?”

“Yeah.”

“OK.”

She didn’t know what else to say.


	11. Chapter 11

Jane didn’t want to know where Thor had been. She was just glad he was home safe.

Darcy accompanied Loki back to the store, the sign he’d scrawled still up in the window. “Sorry, important thing, back later, Darcy + Loki”.

“We should keep this.” Darcy said.

“I’d rather not remember today for too long.” Loki said.

“Come on, I’ll make you a hot chocolate, I think we deserve it…”

“Can we go upstairs? It’s comfier up there.”

Darcy hesitated but agreed. They ended up snuggled under his duvet, the mug burning Darcy’s hands slightly. She’d taken her bag of knitting up there, still trying to find every possible second to get through the wedding favors and set her chocolate down to wait for it to cool a little. Loki was playing something mindless on Netflix but his eyes were fixed on her working fingers.

“You make it look really natural,” he said. “Like it’s not a really weird thing to be doing.”

“What?”

“Knitting. When most people do it, it looks really strange. Like, they have to concentrate all the time.”

“That’s because you mostly see beginners. They haven’t got used to the motion yet.”

“You make it look like magic.”

“It’s not. You know it’s not. It’s just yarn.”

She wasn’t sure why she was uncomfortable.

He shrugged. “You usually talk about it like it’s magic. Like, making something out of nothing but a long string and cleverness using two sticks. I’m just saying, when I watch you, that’s the one time I can really believe that it is. And I hope that one day I’ll reach that stage.”

“You should get out your lace. Practice makes perfect, as they say. What are you making anyway?”

“It’s going to be a blanket. Eventually. It’s slow going.”

She nodded. “Well, that’s lace for you. Why a blanket, why not a scarf? It’d be easier. Smaller.”

“It’s… it’s for if Thor and Jane have…y’know, children…” he shuffled a little against the pillows. “I want to be prepared, that’s why I’m making it now. Started it before they were even engaged. Just in case. Because if Thor has kids I’ve decided I’m going to be part of their lives, from the beginning, not some… vague figure walking in and out of their dad’s life leaving destruction in his wake.” He paused. “If I have nieces or nephews I want them to love me. I want to be part of their family.”

Darcy wasn’t sure what to say to that. They sat in silence for a little while, with just indistinct dialogue from Loki’s laptop and the rhythmic clicking of Darcy’s needles as she finished yet another blossom.

“Do you want to talk about today?” she asked.

“I guess I should.” he said as though resigned to her questioning.

“Only if you want to.”

“It’s healthy to talk. Or so they say.” He ran his fingers through his hair, catching on a knot. “Where… where should I start? I’m not best known for sharing my feelings.”

“Did you suspect that Thor might freak out before the wedding?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get that impression last night?”

“Yes. But I thought he was just drunk and that he’d snap out of it.”

She thought for a while. “What did you say to him out in the water?”

He sighed. “Well, to start off with I called him an idiot for going skinny dipping in fucking April. And he said he was still wearing underwear which made it just dipping. We were playing for time before we’d have to talk properly. So I told him that Jane had shown up, crying, and that he had better have a good explanation for what he thought he was playing at. And he sort of pouted and did that little frowny thing he does when he knows he’s wrong but he doesn’t want to give up just yet. And he said that he didn’t deserve Jane and that it would be better in the long run if he just quietly stepped out of her life. And I called him a fool and pointed out that the month of the wedding is a totally ridiculous time to be having second thoughts and that he needed to get his head out of his ass and go home to his fiancée.”

“Points for forthrightness, I suppose?” Darcy said.

“And basically he was a total baby for a little while longer, saying that Jane deserved someone smarter, richer, better able to help with her studies, that if he’d just listened to our father he would have had the lifestyle he wants for her to have and that they would have been able to have a big wedding; that if he could just swallow his pride he could ask our parents for help but that it was too late for that; bla, bla, bla. I just told him what you’d said. That if he’d been head of the company he wouldn’t have been at that party of mutual friends where he met Jane, and so she’d be in exactly the same place as she is now, just without a big blonde idiot by her side. A big blonde idiot that she loves. For some reason. And he sort of sniffed a bit and said we should get out of the water.”

“Do you…” she stopped.

“What?”

“No, I can’t ask you that.”

“Darcy, of all people, I think you can ask me anything.”

“Do you feel weird acting like you don’t love him?”

Loki stared off into space. “It’s what I’ve always done. I’m used to it. But he sees right through it.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know, per se. It’s just a feeling. I guess I believe that in his head no matter what I say to him, or what I call him, he hears what I really mean. And what I really meant was ‘You’re perfect. You don’t need to change for me or for Jane or for anyone because we love you for you and you need to stop feeling like you’re not good enough because you’re good enough for us’. Thor’s always been able to tell when I’m lying.”

“You’re really OK with Jane now, aren’t you?”

“I was…jealous. But she makes him happy like no one else. And if part of this whole ‘rehabilitation’ thing I have going involves making sure Thor is happy then it’s my job to be OK with her. I love Thor. She loves Thor. We have the same goal if you look at it.”

Darcy nodded. There wasn’t anything else she wanted to know. Her best friend was happy and her… her Loki was happy-ish. It would do for now.

“Would you mind if I hunkered down under the covers now?” he asked.

“No.”

“…Would you mind being my big spoon?”

She couldn’t stop herself from giggling helplessly. She gulped down the rest of her now lukewarm chocolate as Loki helped bundle up her knitting supplies and moved his laptop to the bedside table, still playing.

“I am far too small to big spoon you.” she said as she shuffled down to join him.

“It’s fine, you’ll figure something out. I just…”

“What?”

“I just want to be held a little bit, that’s all.”

She didn’t have any response for that and settled for locking an arm around his chest. As an afterthought she wrapped a leg around him too.

“See? I knew you and your weird octopus limbs would be fine.” he mumbled.

“Shut up, or I’ll let go.”

“No, stay…”

She wasn’t sure when they fell asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

Her phone rang.

“Darcy?”

“Hmmm?”

“Wake up. Wedding. Do the things.”

“Shit.”

Two weeks had seemed like ages when she’d woken up to Loki ordering pizza the day they’d found Thor by the lake. Two weeks had not been very long.

The wedding rehearsal had been fine. The favors were all done and placed into tiny boxes hand-folded by herself and Jane to go on the tables at dinner, with the exception of Thor’s, Loki’s and her own.

She’d designed, knitted and delivered the bouquet to Jane.

It was fine. Everything was fine.

“It’s fine, yep, I’m up.” she said to Loki down the phone.

“Great, Thor’s already with me, you’re due with Jane in two hours. Oh, and do you happen to know where I might have left the rings? I seem to have misplaced them…”

Her blood ran cold.

“What do you mean ‘misplaced’?”

He burst out laughing. “Kidding, kidding! Just giving you a worst case scenario to deal with. Now you can be glad that that hasn’t happened.”

“Gee, thanks…”

She hung up on him and shuffled towards the shower. It would be alright. Jane was fine. Thor was fine. Loki was fine.

His best man’s speech would be fine.

It was all fine. 

Jane wanted to do her hair and makeup herself and not pay for a stylist and when Darcy arrived at her apartment she was visibly trying to stay calm and not doing very well.

“Darcy, tell me I look alright.”

“You look ridiculously gorgeous.”

She did. She hadn’t bothered too much with her hair, just pinned it up in a smooth bun, and her makeup would best be described as something like understated. Or elegant.

Jane breathed deeply and sat down.

“I can’t believe it’s today.” she said, laughing.

“Me neither, but it is and the car is waiting. Not that I’m rushing you.”

Jane tottered slightly in the unfamiliar heels. She’d been trying to wear them in for weeks but they were still strange on her feet.

Darcy squeezed her hand once they were safely in the car. “It’s fine. It’s all going to go by in a flash and then you and Thor will be officially married and you can get on with your lives.”

_And I can get on with mine…_

Loki hadn’t been lying when he said he’d made sure Thor would look alright. The expressions on both Thor and Jane’s faces when they saw each other made it worth it. Even if Loki did make a show of tapping his pockets when the rings were called for, apparently just to make Darcy want to punch him in the face.

But the ceremony wasn’t what she was worried about. It was the reception she was dreading, even as picture after picture was taken of the whole wedding party and of Thor and Jane by themselves and of Thor with his parents and Jane with her father and every combination she thought possible.

_OK. Be nice to Thor’s dad even though apparently he’s a douche. Look after Thor’s mom because apparently she’s a sweetheart. Rely on Sif to control Thor’s guy friends. Rely on Jane’s friends to look after themselves. Rely on Loki to not fuck up._

_It’s fine, everything’s fine,_ she told herself sitting down in her designated chair between Jane and Mr. Foster.

Once the food had been devoured or picked at depending on the person, and about a thousand toasts had been called including a short speech from Jane’s father about how proud he was to have such a son-in-law, and dozens of people had come to congratulate the happy couple, Loki glanced at Thor, deemed him ready, and stood up.

Frigga tapped genteelly on a glass.

Everyone in the room looked at Loki and steeled themselves. Darcy hadn’t been unaware of the looks already thrown his way. It seemed a fair few people were of the opinion that Thor had taken leave of his senses when he let his little brother come to the wedding, let alone actually be involved.

He cleared his throat. A few intakes of breath from the assembled listeners.

_Oh, God, he’s enjoying playing with them…_

“Friends, family, people fortunate enough never to have met me,” he began. “The man to my right is known to you all; and the lady beside him to most of you as well. He is my brother, my dearest friend, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I claim to be the person who knows him best in this room.”

Darcy coughed.

“With the exception of Jane, perhaps.” Loki was either covering well or he was deliberately trying to send Darcy into a panic.

“Growing up with Thor wasn’t always easy,” he continued. “It was hard to compete with someone as warm, caring and above all, forgiving as he is. Of course his habit of being far too charitable and his general naivety were to my advantage. I can quite honestly say that I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for a certain big brother and his inexplicably continuing belief that I deserve a place in his life. I also wouldn’t be here if not for Jane, whose insistence that I couldn’t stay in their apartment led to the stability of my current home and job.”

Mild titters from one or two guests, general confusion from most.

“I’ll admit that I wasn’t always the best brother. I have been cruel and unfeeling towards Thor on many occasions. The same cannot be said of him. In fact I do not think anyone in this room can think of a single occasion where Thor has as much as said an unkind word. That’s not to say he’s never made any poor decisions. Anyone who’s seen the tattoo of the words ‘Carpe Diem’ across his back can testify to that.”

Thor elbowed Loki in the hip desperately as Odin spluttered into a glass of water.

“Ah. Forgot your father didn’t know about that. Still, in the past now. Like so many other things.”

If she’d been able to kick Loki under the table, Darcy would have. _We’ve come so far, you can do this without upsetting your dad…_

“Let’s talk about Jane, shall we? The woman who has chosen Thor to be with her and to share her life. I can’t even begin to tell you how little I liked Jane when I first met her.”

_Oh, God. Oh, God, where is the wine, I need some wine now…_

“I hasten to point out that any animosity between myself and Jane was entirely my fault. You see, I was unsure of anyone my brother saw fit to allow into his life. Because if he was willing to accept me, who knew what other monsters he was falling prey to? But I gradually got to know Jane a little better and I began to see what kind of person my brother had paired himself with; someone intelligent, passionate, kind. In short, someone who matched him. And the more time I spent with her, the more I realized that this was the partner for my brother. Someone I could trust to take care of the big idiot and stop him doing stupid things. It’s a role I utterly failed to play in his life. Jane, I wish you all the best with it, and may you be more successful than me. By which I mean keep him away from tattoo parlors. Or at least make him pick a better font.”

He picked up his glass.

“I know these are supposed to be funny, but my sense of humor tends not to be shared by many. Therefore, I will just congratulate my brother and his wife for having found each other and wish them many happy years together. To Thor and Jane.”

_It could have been worse. That was actually not bad, considering._

She told Loki so when she finally managed to pull him to one side. Jane was about to throw her bouquet, on the understanding that it would be given back to her. Darcy wasn’t too keen to get involved with the pushing.

“Thanks,” Loki said. “I improvised it.”

“You what?”

“I made it up on the spot.”

She stared at him. “This was your one job in advance of today, Loki! You just had to write the speech. That’s it. And you’re telling me that you didn’t do it?”

“That wasn’t my job. Not my only job anyway.”

“Oh, wasn’t it?”

“No. My job, as given to me by Jane, was to keep you grounded enough to keep her grounded.”

“What?”

“It was up to me to be there for you when you were hiding your stress from her. Hadn’t you noticed how nice I was being lately? Most of the time? Making you coffee and buying you pizza…”

“I thought that’s because we’re friends and friends are nice to each other!”

“That too, but Jane asked me to make a special effort. And then suddenly I had to supervise Thor as well. Basically I have spent the last week keeping an eye on everyone to make sure no one went running off to lakes or broke their hands knitting a million flowers - which are gorgeous by the way, well done,” His fingers brushed lightly against the corsage she’d made for herself, in green to match his buttonhole. “And to make sure Jane didn’t suddenly come to her senses and realize that Thor is an idiot. So I’m sorry if I didn’t find the time to write puns.”

There was cheering as Sif caught the bouquet, her greater than average height playing to her advantage. She smiled and handed it back to Jane, making some kind of joke as she did so if Jane’s laughter was any indication.

“Hmm. I suppose that’s alright then. I don’t think anyone knew you hadn’t written it in advance.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“And you don’t really think he’s an idiot.”

“Of course I don’t.”

The tables had been cleared, the band had tuned up and Darcy suddenly turned to Loki in horror.

“We never learned to dance!”

“What?”

“We’re meant to dance together! You and me, we never learned how! I didn’t even think about it, there wasn’t time…”

Loki watched as Thor playfully led Jane to the dance floor.

“We could run away.” he said.

“What?”

“Everyone’s focused on the joyously happy couple. You and I could just… slip away. Not be here. For a while.”

“And what do you propose we do for ‘a while’?”

“Well… I’m sure we’ll think of something.”


	13. Chapter 13

They giggled like children as they scampered through the halls of the hotel.

Loki had taken a full bottle of wine and two glasses from behind the bar on his way out, saying it was for his parents. Darcy wasn’t sure whose tab that would end up on.

“It’s like we’re skipping class,” she said as she struggled to unlock the door to her room.

“Except we have a good excuse for this.”

“Which is?” She finally got the door open.

“Clearly, as the two people who basically made this day happen, we were far too tired and went to our respective rooms to sleep a little, hoping we could come back down later.”

“But we’re not in our respective rooms. You’re in my room. With wine.”

“As long as you have a corkscrew, I’ll soon be in your room with no wine.”

“We don’t need a corkscrew. Screw tops, baby. I figured the fewer sharp objects in the room for the reception the better.”

He shrugged his way out of his suit jacket, sat on her bed and poured her a glass.

“To pulling off a wedding.”

“To Jane and Thor being married and the return of normality.”

He frowned as they clinked glasses. “What normality?”

“You, me, the Yarn Barn. Knitting everywhere, intermittent wifi, sexual conquests in your case…”

“Why only in my case? Look at you, you could have anyone you wanted.”

“Oh, come on, Lokes,” Darcy said, setting her glass down on the bedside table before climbing up to rest against the headboard. “It takes me a long time to get comfortable enough with someone to want to sleep with them. Like, even if I like them a lot, it takes me a long time. I just don’t have the time to build up that kind of connection.”

“So, wait, you need to be in love with someone before you can have sex with them?”

“No. No, it’s just…” she shifted uncomfortably. “I need to trust them a lot, that’s all. And it takes a while for me to build that trust.”

Loki quirked his head. “Well, I’m glad I’m not like that. I’d never get any.”

She laughed. “What, there’s no one in your life that you trust?”

“I trust Thor. And I trust you. That’s honestly about it.”

“I trust you too.”

He shuffled up the bed to sit next to her. He ran his free hand lightly down her arm. She watched the motion carefully before her eyes flicked back up to his face.

“Do you trust me enough to let me kiss you right now?”

She leant in to him. The kiss was cautious, gentle, a simple press of lips against lips. Nothing like she expected from Mr Done-Everything-Twice-Backwards. She opened her mouth, drawing him deeper and felt him sigh against her.

She rested her forehead against his when they broke apart.

“Good?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, that was…nice…” she said lamely.

He chuckled. “I was rather hoping for a better review than just ‘nice’.”

“OK, fine. It was great and I’d like a repeat performance please…”

“Hmmm. Well, you asked very nicely, but I had other things in mind.”

“Tell me. Perhaps if _you_ ask nicely…”

“I was just thinking, I could finish this glass of wine, get down between your legs and show you whether your hypothesis about my… skills with my tongue is true.”

“Oh my God, that was weeks ago…”

“And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about it rather a lot since then.

“Then I… could probably be convinced that that is a good idea.”

Loki grinned and knocked back his wine.

“Get comfortable,” he said. “I expect the trip towards screaming and begging might take a while.”

“Someone’s confident.” Darcy rearranged the pillows and flopped back against them.

“Someone has never had any complaints.”

She watched as he removed both her shoes, flexing her feet.

“Are these stockings?”

“Yep.”

“Am I going to find suspenders further up?”

“Maybe.”

 He surged back up her body to kiss her again. There was no preamble this time, this was all tongue and moaning and everything she’d come to expect from kissing him before. One hand was cradling her head while the other insistently slid under her skirt to find the bare skin between the top of her stockings and her underwear.

“Wait,” she said suddenly. “Hang on. I need to ask you something.”

His hands instantly stilled.

“You have to promise not to get mad,” she added. “Just… tell me this isn’t about Thor.”

“What?”

She closed her eyes. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just need to know that I’m not a substitute for anyone else…”

“No, no, it’s fine. I can see how you might have come to that conclusion. But this isn’t… I’m not thinking about him. I’m thinking about you and how ridiculously hot you look in this dress and how happy I am that I’m finally going to get to see you out of it…”

“Really?”

“Yes, really, I’ve been dreaming of tearing this dress off you since I first saw it.”

“Well, less of the tearing please, this was expensive…”

“Can I keep going?”

“Sure. You better keep those promises about screaming and begging…”

“Oh, I intend to...” His voiced dropped to a whisper. “If you let me get you out of this dress in the next five seconds.”

“You first. And don’t go too fast, I want to enjoy this.”

He shuffled off the bed, smirking at her and gently tugged at the knot of his tie. Darcy took another sip of her wine and enjoyed the view, Loki’s hands moving to unbutton his waistcoat and then starting on his shirt. She set her glass back down and sat up on her knees to unzip her dress.

“Don’t you dare,” Loki said, halfway out of his shirt. “I want to take that off you myself.”

“Well hurry up and get back over here then…”

He snorted. “’Slow down’, ‘hurry up’, make up your mind…”

“Hurry up.”

“Underwear on or off?”

“On… For now…”

He practically tore the rest of his clothes off, drawing a condom out of his back pocket and throwing it on the bed at the last minute.

“Have you been carrying that around all day?” Darcy asked incredulously.

“I always have at least one on me,” Loki said, practically prowling round to the side of the bed. “I don’t ever want to be unprepared. And it’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Yes, it’s incredibly chivalrous to bring your own birth-control.”

“Any man who doesn’t is a cad, and you should stay away from him.”

“Loki. Shut up and very carefully get me out of this dress.”

She felt weird letting him slowly work the side zip and slide the dress from her shoulders, running his hands over her bared skin, and down her torso. He stopped when the bodice of the dress was removed, the silk pooling round her waist, and kissed her neck hungrily, never quite biting but with the sense that teeth couldn’t be far away. She couldn’t tell if she was being worshipped or devoured. Maybe both.

He gently pushed her back onto the mattress and she lifted her hips to let him remove the garment from her completely. She moved round to lie stretched out and watched as he draped it over a chair in the corner and looked at her, his eyes running up and down her body as he approached the bed again.

“Suspenders...” He ran a hand up her thigh reverently, sliding one finger under the elastic.

Darcy felt a shiver run up her spine. A good shiver, but a shiver nonetheless. He was kneeling between her legs now, fingers trailing over her skin, moving slowly but steadily closer to her underwear. She let her eyes close, enjoying the moment, the sensation of his touch. She jerked up when Loki started trying to remove her panties though.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting you out of your underwear so I can go down on you, what do you think I’m doing?”

“Haven’t you ever dealt with suspenders before?”

“Actually no, this is quite the treat for me.”

“You have to take the garter belt and stockings off first. Unless your suspender-wearing friend has deliberately dressed backwards for you.”

He paused. “I really don’t want you out of these stockings though. Any way we can keep them?”

She sighed. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Firstly, because you look really, ridiculously good in them; and secondly, because they’ll feel really smooth on my skin when your legs are wrapped around my waist…”

“You want me to unclip my suspenders, take off my panties, and then reclip my suspenders? You’re ridiculous.” she scoffed, but did it anyway.

“Thank you,” he said, settling down between her thighs. “Now relax and let me do all the work. For once.”

She lay back as he kissed up the inside of her leg. She found herself wishing she’d known she was going to be getting lucky – _Getting Loki_ , the thought automatically bubbled up in her head – before she’d ended up in bed with him. She felt somewhat unprepared.

_I haven’t shaved above the knee in ages and don’t trim usually, and I’m still carrying weight from Christmas somehow, and OH, GOD, keep doing that…_

She sighed happily as Loki grinned up at her. “Good?”

“Yeah.”

“More?”

“Yeah…”

His laughter vibrated through her as he bent back down, massaging her clit with his tongue slowly but firmly, a continuous roll at a maddeningly steady pace. She tilted her hips slightly, trying to give him a hint to speed up, but he just laced his arms around her thighs to hold her still.

She whined and he made a vague questioning noise without even breaking rhythm.

_He wants me to ask… He wants me to beg…_

She flopped her head back onto the pillows. “Could you go a bit faster?”

No change.

“Please?” she tried.

He shifted slightly and began lapping at her, tiny little licks, fast but with no force behind them.

“Stop teasing me,” she demanded, propping herself up on her elbows and drinking in the sight of his head buried between her thighs.

He looked up at her. “Tell me what you want, Darcy.”

“Come on, move…”

He flicked the tip of his tongue hard against her clit, and she yelped.

“I’m afraid I’m going to need more… explicit instructions, boss…”

She recovered herself and glared down at him, seriously considering hitting him with a pillow. He snaked his head back and forth, his breath ghosting over her flesh.

_You want to play that game, fine. We’ll play that game._

She reached down and tugged his hair until he obediently crawled up her body to be face to face.

“I want you to get back down there and use those skills you were so proud of earlier to make me come. Hard. And maybe, if you manage that, I’ll let you fuck me. Explicit enough for you?”

Loki slammed his mouth against hers and she could feel him hard against her thigh through his boxers for a moment before he slid back down her body, pausing for a moment to rub his hand over her left breast, still in the lace of her bra.

“Later…” he muttered, apparently without realizing he had.

He ran his hands up her legs again – _He really does have a stocking fetish, huh?_ – before he put his mouth to her cunt again. There was no teasing now; Darcy panted as he settled into a faster rhythm, his tongue flicking back and forth across her clit. He brought his hands over her hips when she started to arch her back and grind against him and held her still before he anchored his lips against her and sucked.

“Jesus, fuck!”

He moaned against her, his breath coming sharply through his nose. She couldn’t say how long he’d been down there, a few seconds or a few hours, it made no difference, right now she was maddeningly close to getting off, she just needed something…

“Use your fingers…” she said breathlessly.

Loki made an objecting noise.

“Look,” she moaned. “I know you want to make me come using your mouth alone, but, ah!” He’d redoubled his efforts suddenly – _That bastard was holding back on me_ – and she convulsed, her thighs automatically tightening around his head.

 _I didn’t scream_ , she told herself later, though the high-pitched cries coming from her mouth weren’t far off. She was still breathing heavily when she’d stopped shaking and Loki carefully eased her legs apart. He smirked at her, wiping his chin.

“Told you,” he said. “No complaints.”

She reached for him and did her best to wrap herself around his frame, hooking her legs around him, simultaneously wanting more and needing a break. She just wanted him close. He kissed her leisurely, letting her taste herself on his tongue and run her hands through his hair. She felt him undo her bra and stretched her arms out to let him remove it. He ran a hand down her torso and back up to cup one of her breasts.

“Have I ever told you that you have an incredible set of tits?” he breathed against her ear.

“Jesus, Loki, stop with the romance, I’ll swoon…”

He laughed. “You’re sufficiently recovered from round one then? Besides, I mean it. They’re beautiful.”

He bent to take a nipple into his mouth and swirl his tongue around it. Darcy found her breath hitching again. He paid the same attention to the other and began kissing down her sternum towards her naval.

“No, come back. Kiss me.”

He obeyed instantly. “What do you want?”

“I… I want…” It was difficult to be articulate with someone steadily planting open-mouthed kisses along your collarbone. “I want to ride you.”


	14. Chapter 14

Loki rolled them and she found herself straddling him.

“I might just be amenable to this,” he said as she ground against him, feeling his erection through his shorts. “But you are going to have to move for just a second.  And hand me that condom.”

 “Just for a second…”

He was out of his underwear by the time she turned back to him, practically snatched the condom from her and had it on before she could register what was happening.

“Well, that was…” she said.

“Impressive?”

“More like efficient.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You said ‘just for a second’, I was trying to match your anticipated timetable for this project.”

She straddled his thighs, looking down at his cock. She stroked it carefully and was rewarded with a moan from Loki.

“Are you trying to use business terminology as dirty talk?”

“Is it working?”

“I don’t know, keep going.”

“Right, uh…” he was evidently struggling to retain his composure under her attentions. “I was thinking, boss, that it would be… highly beneficial to our operation for this transaction to go ahead ASAP. The industry is poised to explode, given the right investments… Um… Leverage buyouts? Shareholders. Market my stocks, baby.”

“What on earth are you imagining _that_ to be a euphemism for?”

“I have absolutely no idea. I can try to think of one if you’d like but my mind is sort of otherwise occupied and if there is any chance of you actually fucking me tonight, it would make my week…”

She repositioned, not missing the way his eyes focused on the way her breasts moved and how his hands automatically moved to her hips. She poised herself over him, enjoying the power she had over him, and waited, listening to his heavy breathing.

“Darcy…”

“Ask nicely.”

“Please. Please, I’ve wanted you so long, please, please…”

She sank down, taking him in and watching his head jerk back at the suddenness of it. She deliberately set a slow pace, rolling her hips, tightening the grip of her thighs around him.

_If you think you can tease me and get away with it, you’ve got another thing coming…_

“Darcy, please…”

She bent over him, hands splayed over his chest and lent down until their noses were almost touching, still gently rocking against him.

“Tell me what you want, Loki.” she said in her best impression of his tone.

She giggled when he snarled and sat up, wrapping his arms around her and forcing her legs to lock around his waist to keep herself seated in his lap.

“What do I want?” he growled, thrusting up into her at a faster pace now he was in control of the motion. “Oh, Darcy, you don’t even want to know the things I want to do with you…”

“Oh, yeah?” she panted. “Come on, shock me, tell me everything you’ve ever dreamed of…”

“I want to know every inch of you; I want to trace you with my tongue and my hands; I want to tie you up and blindfold you while I do it so you never know where I’m going to touch next; I want you to gag me and make me scream; I want to introduce you to all my friends and ask them if they want to fuck us both and see if we can’t blow their minds…”

She sank her teeth into his shoulder and he groaned before continuing. “I want to fuck your tits while Tasha goes down on you; I want to fuck you while Tony fucks me; I want Clint to fuck you while he sucks me off; I want to wait until everyone else has gone home and then fuck you again, slowly and gently, just the pair of us, because no matter who else comes to us, that place belongs to us and we run it and, oh, God, I was so right, stockings feel amazing, you are so wearing these again…”

“Maybe we should get you a pair…” she said, her nails skittering down his back. “You ever worn heels? You’d look hot. And I could do your makeup…”

“And then smudge it all over me and tell me I’m pretty? Bend me over the bed and peg the hell out of me and pull my hair and _bruise_ me…”

“I don’t know what some of that means, but yes, fuck, yes, let’s do that, let’s do everything we can think of…”

He tipped her down into the mattress, and dragged her back from where her head was almost off the edge. He clamped his hands down on her hips.

“Touch yourself, Darce; I want you to come first, I want to feel it…”

Her mind was awash with all the filthy things he’d just been saying to her and she laughed when she realized she wanted all of that and was thinking about how much she wanted it and how she wanted it right _now_ even when he was fucking her right that second. Still, she reached down to work her clit while he attempted to drive her through the bed.

“Come on, Darcy… Come on…”

She bucked against him, concentrating on the build within herself, the feeling of being completely and utterly surrounded and desired and the noises Loki was making, the sounds that she was _making_ him make…

She might have screamed a little this time, feeling the clench of her inner muscles around Loki’s cock, her shout drowning out his own cries as he finally let go and allowed himself release. He peppered kisses against her face and shoulders as he pulled out before heading for the bathroom. She stretched out her limbs, breathing deeply, allowing herself to bask for a moment in the sensation of being pleasantly exhausted before she felt the shivers of sweat cooling on her skin.

She grunted as she sat up and finally took off the stockings and garter belt, dumping them unceremoniously on the floor and shuffling naked under the covers. She was considering finishing her glass of wine so as not to waste it when Loki returned and flopped onto his stomach next to her.

“Alright?” she asked.

“Better than alright.” he said, reaching for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.

“Yeah, that was… pretty incredible…”

He paused for a while, absently tracing patterns on her wrist with the fingers of his other hand.

“So what now?” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how are we going to do this? I propose that essentially nothing change about our relationship apart from the obvious fact that we are now sleeping together. We’ll remain a professional team, good friends, and no longer feel any embarrassment when we want to ask the other to join us in bed or on the desk or wherever…”

She stared at him. “Loki, you’re making this sound like there are about to be contracts…”

“No, no contracts. But I think a timetable of our schedules might be a good idea. We’re going to need a lot of time if we’re going to coordinate enough to try even the list of activities we came up with tonight…”

“Are you… just trying to make sure that I’m aware this is just a friendly sex thing and that I shouldn’t be expecting you to take me for dinner or be in love with me or anything?”

He paused. “Yes.”

“OK, well, I’m aware of that. Why didn’t you just say?”

“Because I like you very much as a friend, and it turns out I also like you very much as a friend who sometimes has sex with me and I didn’t want to seem like… I don’t know. A dick, I guess.”

“But I already know that you’re a dick.”

“I know but… You know what I mean.”

She giggled helplessly. It was a rare thing to see Loki nervous or unsure. “I would love to move our relationship from ‘friends’ to ‘friends who sometimes have sex with each other’.”

He brushed his lips against her knuckles. It was far more chaste and romantic than it had any right to be.

“Are you staying here tonight?” she asked.

“If that’s alright. I can go if you’d prefer.”

“No, no. It’s fine.”

“I was also going to shower.”

“Cool.”

“I was also going to ask if you wanted to join me in said shower…”

She gave him a wry smile, kicked the blankets off, let him pull her out of the bed, and lead her by the hand towards the bathroom.

“There’s no way we’re going back downstairs is there?” she said.

“None at all. Thor and Jane will just have to cope without us for a few hours.”

“Well, I’m sure we can fix whatever mess they get into tonight in the morning…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... that's it. Thank you so much for coming with me through this and I hope the pay off was worth it.  
> Will there be more of this? It's possible, I'm not ruling it out, but I can make no promises.


End file.
